Yesterday, Sylvana Simons ended up at the tail end of Pauw & De Wit in a TV row with Fleur Agema. The former party leader of BIJ1 stood up for Joop van den Ende. “It’s just nonsense!”
Joop van den Ende has had an advertisement printed in all major newspapers calling for action against the demolition of the public system, as he calls it. According to him, this cost him 260 thousand euros. Why does he do that? Is that because his daughter Iris’ company is the producer of NPO titles such as Eva?
No financial interest
The billionaire denies it Pauw & De Wit that there is a financial interest behind it. “You can’t blame me for maintaining the position I’ve always had, can you? (…) I find it too easy to say: yes, he must have a financial interest. Then I should have given her the money from those advertisements I placed. That’s nonsense.”
According to Joop, it is purely about preserving programs about art, culture and history, but according to fellow talk show guest Fleur Agema (PVV) – her party wants to abolish the entire NPO – he does not have to worry about that: “Many of those parts also do very well with commercial customers.”
‘That’s nonsense!’
Joop is really annoyed by that position. “Oh, Fleur, what you say is complete nonsense! Hello, I have supplied commercial broadcasters in almost the entire world. Do you think they make a cultural program about books or Nederland Zingt? Those people are also entitled to it. It is not financially feasible! What you say is nonsense.”
The PVV’s supporters do not want any public broadcaster at all, Fleur emphasizes. “I come from a political movement in which people do not feel heard by the public broadcaster. You should care about that too. That is not nonsense. I talk to people on the street about it every day.”
“That leader of yours!”
According to Joop, the PVV’s position is disgraceful. “Fleur, it’s censorship. When he shouts: ‘It’s all fake news!’, that leader of yours, that’s just a lie! It’s not true!”
“If there is one group of people… That is RTL News who does not do that, SBS has gone in a slightly different direction, the public broadcaster has editorial statutes, journalists who stand for something, who have an opinion and who work very hard for it. Then you just throw that away. Isn’t that flat? That’s nothing, isn’t it? That’s nonsense, isn’t it?”
Sylvana joins in
Then Sylvana Simons joins the discussion. “The most important point is why is it so vital for a party like the PVV that we eradicate a public broadcaster, culture in general? We see it happen every day in the House of Representatives from Geert Wilders and his followers.”
She continues: “It’s important that we have an uninformed public, because if we have an uninformed public, then we can tell that public that the number one concern in this country is asylum migration, when that’s not true!”
Fleur angry
Fleur then becomes very angry. “Sylvana, this is really nonsense! This is nonsense! I have just been accused of that, but this is really nonsense! And with that, Geert Wilders is also really being diabolized. There is a distrust and paranoia behind this that is really unacceptable.”
Sylvana: “I’ll wait until you’re done and then I’ll finish what I wanted to say. When Mr. Van den Ende rightly indicates that we have to be careful of American situations, where autocratic leaders like Geert Wilders really want to be with his party, which is not a party at all, because it is not a democratic body…”
“It is very important for those kinds of forces to undermine culture, knowledge, education, science and the like.”
‘This isn’t possible!’
Why is that so according to Sylvana? “So that those autocratic powers have free rein in destroying a general social interest, knowledge and skills. That is what lies underneath. I very much agree with Mr. Van den Ende that we should be very wary of that.”
When Fleur wants to object, host Tim de Wit closes the broadcast. Fleur is furious: “Tim, you can’t end like this! This really isn’t possible! You can’t end like this!”
“Yes, sorry!”, we hear Tim stammer. And then the NOS News starts.